


Not Ticklish

by MaverickWerewolf



Category: Original Work
Genre: Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Comedy, F/M, Fluff, Gen, I have no idea why I am posting it really, Just posting this because I'm proud of it I guess, Mpreg, no sex just mpreg, self-indulgence, unexplained mpreg, well I guess it's pretty much belly kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickWerewolf/pseuds/MaverickWerewolf
Summary: Caiden has kept himself locked up in his quarters for so long now that Gwen just has to go investigate exactly why... and finds more than she ever expected.
Relationships: Caiden/Gwen sort of but also not really
Kudos: 15





	Not Ticklish

**Author's Note:**

> READ FIRST:  
> If you hate male pregnancy, this is not for you. If you are not comfortable with a character, male or female, being pregnant, this is also not for you.
> 
> The pregnancy doesn't extend beyond someone being pregnant, there being a belly, and feeling movement (and feeling of said belly).
> 
> Either way, you have been warned. Please do not come in here to be uncomfortable or upset.
> 
> This is just some silly, lighthearted self-indulgence that I wrote very quickly and randomly on a whim. It's not edited, it's not very pretty, but I am stupidly proud of it and I had a lot of fun writing it - the first time I've really had fun writing in a very long while, and the first self-indulgence I've written in ages. So, here it is if anyone enjoys this kind of thing like I do, even if you don't know my characters. Don't ask me why I enjoy this stuff, I just do.

How long had it been?

Gwen sat quietly in the kitchen of Castle Greywatch, poring over a pair of books: one she had found collecting dust in the castle library and the same bestiary she had gotten from Illikon quite a while back. At this point, she almost knew the bestiary by heart, but it never hurt to double-check any information against her own notes. Because she did that – she kept notes now, private ones.

Like how Conduits – as the Inquisition called people like Caiden – could apparently swallow something like an asrai and not get burned, _and_ the asrai wouldn’t die, _and_ it could talk, _and_ the Conduit could understand said asrai, which no one else seemed to know how to do because all of it seemed to come back to the Fae somehow.

Not that she could tell anyone that. Ever. But it was nice to know, at least, right?

Unfortunately, it had been a while since she got to take new notes, thanks to Caiden deciding to lock himself up in his room for… a while now. She didn’t really keep track of time, but she knew it had been _quite_ a while, actually.

That had led her to ask around with the other Venatori and see if anyone could get through to him. Maybe he was going through some kind of depression, but he _always_ seemed depressed at least a little, and he’d always managed to handle it before. All that only made it even more worrying.

Kiya reported a day or two ago that she had gotten him to open the door enough to peek out and he seemed fine. And then Jed claimed he caught him sneaking down to steal entire sacks of food and carry it back up to his room – which had sparked a conversation about whether or not he needed to actually cook anything. After witnessing him eating raw eggs, though, Gwen already knew the answer to that.

Now, however, no one had gotten him to open the door for days. So, gathering up her books, Gwen got up and started toward the stairs. Along the way, she caught looks from Kiya, Jed, Forge, and several other Venatori who had all become invested in the mystery of Caiden’s determination for solitude. Gwen just offered them a quick little smile and went up the stairs.

When she reached Caiden’s room, sunlight poured in through all the windows in full noon bloom – it was a beautiful day, a perfect day for training, and definitely a day Caiden would ordinarily be outside, probably wandering around eating something or else sparring circles around everyone else. Yet here he was, cooped up in his quarters, with the door shut tight.

“Caiden?” Gwen said cautiously, pausing before the unfeeling wooden door between her and her partner. “It’s been a _really_ long time. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Pressing her ear against the door, she heard some movement, then unmistakable heavy footsteps plodding over. But they stopped, and she leaned her ear away again, waiting, hoping – but the door didn’t open.

“I’m fine,” came the answer she knew was coming, in that same rather flat, very gruff, and – to her – completely unbelievable tone as usual. Gwen groaned and rolled her eyes.

“Do you _actually_ think that still works on me?” she said.

A pause.

A long pause. It dragged.

And it dragged…

The door creaked. Popped. Like maybe he was leaning on it.

Then the pause dragged on again, if it could even be called a pause at this point. Until Gwen prompted, “Caiden.”

She got a low grunt in return, but at least he was listening.

“Please open the door and talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to help. I know you know that already, probably – I guess – but there I am saying it. We’re supposed to be partners. You know you can trust me.”

Another beat, a long one – but not as long as the last one. Then she heard movement again, a low, grating sigh, and finally the door slowly groaned open. Caiden peered at her through the small opening he’d created – she couldn’t help but notice he was wearing that black void iron collar of his, the one that helped shut out his abilities – and then gave a jerk of his head.

“Get in here,” he said, voice low and conspiratorial. He even glanced down the hallway behind her, sticking his head out awkwardly, while Gwen slipped in under his chin.

The moment she was through the door, Caiden shut it behind her and put a bar over it that he had apparently fashioned himself and been using this entire time. Gwen blinked and, instantly, had a thousand thoughts rush through her head like a torrent—

Had he been bitten by a werewolf? Was he turning, or afraid he was going to turn? Was it something else, something worse? Were his abilities getting to him this badly? Was he going crazy, like the Inquisition claimed all Conduits did eventually? Start seeing things, start…

Then Caiden turned around to face her.

That simple dreary shirt he often had thrown on around the castle had always been too little for him, but this was something entirely different. He looked just the same, except where those honestly kind of ridiculous washboard abs belonged on his stomach – not that Gwen had ever dwelt on those – there was a belly.

As in, an actual belly, and not a terribly small one. Not a huge one, or anything, and not something like a beer gut – which, admittedly, she did sometimes wonder how Caiden managed to not have one of those, even as much working out and pushing himself to the limit as he did – but it looked almost like…

Oh gods, it couldn’t be that, though.

Yet there it was, very round, very fuzzy, and big enough to push up the poor, strained shirt on its last legs trying to do anything for him. For half a second, she even let her eyes track the thick line of dark hair that disappeared under said belly and then under his belt, and she instantly went red in the face.

Caiden stood there for a few full seconds and stared at her, then folded his arms. Only when she actually pulled her eyes away from the bulge in his middle did she realize he was blushing incredibly. This was it: this was the first time she had ever actually seen him blush, red around the neck and creeping up into his face while his one eye started wandering the room.

Folding his arms only made that shirt look even smaller on him, though, and emphasized just how much it _didn_ _’t_ cover his belly. So in an apparent minor fit of rage, he pulled the whole thing off and threw it across the room in a tiny projectile-shirt-ball. It bounced off the wall before landing unceremoniously in the floor.

He immediately looked like he regretted doing that, for both their sakes. Gwen was pretty certain she was hot enough in the face now to set the castle grounds on fire if she tried.

How did someone _get_ that muscular? And all that _fuzz_.

Finally, Gwen cleared her throat, in an effort to dismiss the awkward silence that made her skin crawl. “So um…” she started, only for Caiden to cut her off.

“I don’t know,” he almost blurted, folding his arms again. Caiden wasn’t really the kind of person to blurt. He immediately recomposed himself after that, too, taking a deep breath and staring straight down at the floor with a frustrated rumble in his throat.

“You don’t… _know_ know, or you don’t know – what this is, or how it started, or…?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think I got cursed. It’s the only thing that makes any sense, because this _doesn_ _’t_ make sense.”

Gwen pinched her lips together briefly and nodded awkwardly, eyes landing on his belly again. Okay, she had to ask.

“Cursed to be, um…” she slowly lifted a finger – she couldn’t do it. “Uh…”

Nope, she couldn’t say it.

“Yeah,” Caiden said, his voice quickly regaining its usual calm, stony quality. But there was a tiny quiver somewhere in the back of it that she had learned to look for when he was at all nervous. She rarely heard it.

Gwen shifted on her feet. “I didn’t say anything, Caiden.”

“I know what you’re thinking, and I think you’re right.”

She quirked a brow. “You know what I’m thinking?” Had his abilities gotten stronger, even with the dampening collar on? The Inquisition had created those to keep Conduits under control, and cruel as they were, they did seem to work.

“No, not—” he huffed. “Not like that.”

“So you think you _are_ …” she finally looked him in the face again, even if he wasn’t looking, “pregnant?”

Finally, his one eye flicked up to stare her in the face again. That lasted all of two seconds before he looked out a window instead, one letting in the cool spring breeze.

“Yeah,” he said, voice slightly hoarse.

Gwen’s jaw worked, but nothing came out at first. Finally, she managed to say, “Sooo, um… like, you’re _sure?_ _”_

Caiden resumed pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes,” he replied.

She shouldn’t. No, really, she shouldn’t at all, but she wanted to. Why, she didn’t fully know, but it was eating at her the way Caiden had tried to explain some kind of emptiness eating at him to her one time when he was being very, very bothered by his abilities.

“DoyoumindifItouchit?” she said so fast that even she barely understood herself.

Instantly, Caiden’s face went blank. His eye darted around the room so aimlessly that Gwen would’ve laughed in any other situation. Until, finally, he looked at her and grunted an odd noise that she knew by now was an affirmative.

“Promise I won’t tickle you,” Gwen said, approaching him not unlike how she might’ve approached an animal she didn’t want to startle.

“I’m not ticklish,” Caiden halfway muttered, unfolding his arms to let them hang by his sides instead. “Just sensitive.”

She grinned. “I remember.”

Getting closer to him served to show her it was actually a considerable bulge, given Caiden’s general enormity – and that thought would sound horrible in any other context, and she knew it, but she was talking about his stomach. Biting her lip, she lifted a hand and gently rested it on the roundness of his big, smooth belly, trying, with great difficulty, to avoid touching any of the copious coverage of thick, dark fuzz that almost constituted as fur.

Not that avoiding it actually helped, because the moment her fingers so much as brushed his skin, Caiden made an odd noise in his throat and started, a shiver running up his spine.

“Sorry,” Gwen said immediately.

Pulling in a sharp, shaky breath, Caiden huffed. Gwen thought she saw the smallest pull of a smile at the corner of his lips, but if it really was one, he was fighting it like his life depended on it.

“It’s fine,” he said rather breathlessly. Gwen felt her eyebrows slowly scoot up her face, because he really seemed to be enjoying this.

So she ran her hand over that belly again, slid her fingers through all that hair and then paused just long enough to very gingerly push her palm flat against him, because she thought she felt something. Which – she did.

She felt movement. Under her hand. Or, more specifically, in Caiden.

Her eyes flicked up to his face again to see him looking straight down at her with his jaw set so hard she almost waited to hear him crack one of his own teeth from the pressure.

“Well,” Gwen said slowly, “there’s definitely something…” her voice trailed.

“In there,” Caiden finished for her.

She frowned. “I wasn’t going to put it like _that_.”

Caiden huffed.

“So you think it’s a curse.”

“What else could it be?”

Okay, that was a fair point. “Who do you think cursed you?”

“Hell if I know. Who’d wanna make me pregnant?”

She tried not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of that coming out of his mouth – or the sheer absurdity of still having a hand on his pregnant belly. Caiden Voros, pregnant. Now _that_ was going in her private notes.

Not that this could be private for too long.

“I don’t know,” Gwen said, “but uh, Caiden…”

“Yeah, I know.” His eye stayed locked on her hand now, the one on his stomach. “The others’ll have to know eventually.”

“You can’t just hide up here forever. Everybody’s already worried sick about you.” She put on a small smile. “You know, you’ve gotten pretty popular around here.”

He grunted, eye still on her hand.

So Gwen lifted her other hand and rested that one on the underside of his belly. Caiden shifted on his feet and looked incredibly bothered – a word that encompassed a whole lot of things and she thought it fit because he looked like he felt every possible definition – and a few seconds later, Caiden put his own hands over hers. They were warm, his hands – warm and calloused and, yes, very large. They carefully flattered her own hands against his belly as he scuffed one boot on the floor, shifting to be just a little closer to her.

Against her better judgment, Gwen moved closer, too, until she rested her body against that belly of his.

Then she couldn’t stop herself from grinning. That got Caiden to finally stop fighting the twitch in his face, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips, and she even saw a hint of teeth when he let himself smile back.

“What?” he prompted, voice coming out all gruff and embarrassed.

“I hope you haven’t been drinking,” Gwen replied.

Caiden groaned. But he grunted afterward in just such a way that Gwen knew he hadn’t been.

“You _are_ a good dad,” she said.

“Shut up,” he half growled, half muttered, but there was a kind of stupid smile in it that let her know the words didn’t come with any bite.

Absently, Gwen stroked her fingers over his skin again. His hand followed hers as she tracked it along the round curve of his belly.

“I bet it’s a monster,” she said, because now they had officially reached the point of teasing. “Does it have fur? Does it tickle?”

“Gods,” Caiden chuffed, but that wasn’t really an answer.

Gwen made a thoughtful face. “Scales? Is it a dragon?”

“Gwen,” he prompted, moving one of her hands back up to rest atop his belly instead. “Please.”

“Please…” she let her voice wander thoughtfully for a moment before finishing, “feel of your belly some more?”

Caiden just rumbled at her, that low sound somewhere between his throat and his chest that sounded like a thoughtful volcano.

But that wasn’t a ‘no’ sort of sound. In fact, it sounded very affirmative.

**Author's Note:**

> [If you enjoy my writing, be sure to check out more (especially my original works) on my blog!](https://maverick-werewolf.tumblr.com/)


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